Die erste Lektion, um der Armut zu entkommen

0:00You stay in poverty until you learn the first lesson of poverty, which is two words, my fault. And so, when I was younger, I was really angry at my parents, like many people are, right? Justified or not, doesn't really matter. I was very angry, and I blamed them for the woes of my life. And I realized at when I was 19 that these people that I hated, I was giving all the power over the fact that I wasn't the person I wanted to be.

0:27And I was like, well, it's their fault. And the idea that I had actually given these people that I hated power over my success was ultimately something that made me feel sick to my stomach and was what allowed me to point the finger of blame inwards and say my fault and then at least take ownership over the fact that like and? Like, sure, maybe your dad didn't hug you enough, or maybe your mom wasn't present, or whatever it is, right? It's like, and? And like, I said this the other day, and it'll probably piss off a lot of your audience, so, you know, we can put our soft earphones on. Um, like, if you were if you if you suffered from racial inequality, if you suffered from gender inequality, if you suffered from being born in Bangladesh, if you were raised uh not raised, if sexually abused your entire life, you would be completely justified in the fact that you are not achieving the things that other people who didn't have those disadvantages have achieved. And I say this as a white guy who was born in America to a doctor father.

1:26I understand that. But at the same degree, you have the opportunity that Chris and or I have, which is that you can be an inspiration to people who just who went through the same thing and succeeded comma despite those circumstances. Because I can promise that there is somebody who has had it worse and has done it better. And I think that that one single point of proof, and like, there's a global point of proof that you can look for, for sure, but like, you can be that very local point of proof in your community or subcommunity. And I think um as soon as we shed that, that's like I just I'm a big fan of power follows the blame finger.

2:00So like wherever you point the blame finger is where the power follows. And so it's like if you point it if you point it to the government, government has the power. If you point it at your your spouse and say like it's their fault that I'm I'm not in shape. It's their fault. They never let me do anything. It's like, well, you're giving them all the power. And so it's like until you're like it's my fault, it's also becomes my responsibility. What is? What if it's not your fault? It doesn't matter. And?

2:26Like I can't run marathons because I lost my leg at birth. And? Either you can just never try, or you put the metal thing on, and you do it anyways. So this is one of the themes that I'm very interested in to do with your work in general, and it's one of the reasons why it bridges the gap from what we're going through, which is you know, some really lovely philosophical insights and all of the rest of it.

2:53The difference is you seem to have a knack to be able to drag yourself out of the philosophy and get yourself into action. There's not too much mental masturbation that goes on. So let's say that there's someone who's listening to this podcast, you know, thousands of people that are listening who are that person. Millions. Thousands of people that are that person. There'll be there'll be a lot of people that are listening. Don't don't worry.

3:19That person that goes I I love when I hear these aphorisms and and things and maybe it goes on the whiteboard that's on the front of my fridge for a couple of months. How does that person get from mental masturbation Yeah. around it to action? That this this impacts my life in a tangible way that actually makes a difference to me. Any of the things that we go through today. All right. Two things. One is knowing the input-output equation. The second is knowing what your fuel is going to be. So, if you can't define the inputs and outputs that are going to get you what you want, then there's no way to start. Right? Because you don't know what you're supposed to do. So, you have to define it down to like the most basic first action. So, it's like if I want to start creating content, that means I have to post something. If it means I have to start doing cold I always think in terms of business, cuz that's what I'm in, but like I'm either doing a cold reach out, I'm doing a cold cold call, cold email, cold DM, whatever that is. I have to make a piece of content, I have to post it, I have to make a podcast, I have to make a YouTube video, I have to make a short, whatever that is, make a blog post.

4:14Um I have to run an ad, right? I have to I have to run the ad, I have to press go, I have to spend the money, whatever it is. Like whatever that core initial action is that you need to do. Whatever the input is, whatever the input is, you have to define what the input is that's going to get you the output you want. Now, once you know what that input output is, the next one is why aren't you doing it? Right? And so, I think a lot of people are looking for something that is very hard to find. And so, and then they attribute their lack of success or lack of action because they don't have passion or motivation, right?

4:45And I was the same way. And so, uh the short story around this was that I uh I I watched all the TED Talks in college. Like that was like what I I was like, "I'm not watching YouTube, I'm watching TED Talks." And I was like and then I real and then I heard the term mental masturbation and I was like, "Oh, that's definitely what I'm doing." I was like, "My life hasn't changed at all." And then I got my job straight out of college and I would read all the self-help books. I read like every night, that's all I did. I just read all these self-help books and I found one of them that said, "There are people who are wantrepreneurs and entrepreneurs."

5:17And I remember hearing that word wantrepreneur and I was like it made me feel sad. I was like, "I don't want to be a [ __ ] wantrepreneur." I was like, "I'm not some bitch." Like but like but I but I was like, "But what if they're right? I am a wantrepreneur. I'm not an entrepreneur. I want to be one and I'm not." And from that point, it took me 6 months to quit my job to actually decide to do the entrepreneurial thing. And the thing There are many things that contributed to me being able to leave. And I think a lot of it's not like people are looking for one thing. It might be a big bag of whys, a lot of them, right? That add up together to be above your action threshold. And I think in the early days, people are looking for the big carrot. They want the big vision. They want the big passion.

5:57But they don't have it. But I want to I'll give you the first rule of entrepreneurship that I've learned, which is use what you have. And a lot more people have pain. A lot more people have anger. A lot more people have shame. And if you can use that as your gas in the beginning, you'll eventually get to a point where you can get out of that loop and then find something that you are really passionate about. But if you can't tie your shoes, you can't lift the weight, you can't send the DM, then you have to start with whatever you have. And so, for me, it was hatred of my current existence. I hated being a wannapreneur.

6:27I hated being a wannabe. I hated being one of those people who like talked about all the things they were going to do and didn't do anything. Um I hated living the life that my dad wanted me to live. I was I was his [ __ ] It's what it was. I was his [ __ ] I was living his dreams out, not mine. And that was, you know, led to that other tweet, sometimes your parents' dreams have to die in order for yours to live. And for me, I realized that the idea that my father had of me as his son, that image had to die in order for the image of myself that I wanted to be to live. Because I kept trying to quit my job and go be an entrepreneur. And every time I'd have the conversation, he'd be like, "Ah, come over. We'll talk about it. We'll have dinner, you know?" And he'd always talk me off the ledge. It was always over and over again.

7:13>> But he's a salesman. Yeah. And or great authoritarian. You don't need to persuade when you have compliance. Um and so uh and so everybody has that person or or it it's it might actually be somebody who's talking you off the ledge um or it might actually be a voice in your head. It doesn't really matter cuz that that voice and person that only happened once or twice probably keeps talking to you when you're at home. Um but the big thing for me when I when I decided to make the jump, and mind you, I was such a [ __ ] about it that I I had to drive drove the country before I called him to tell him that I'd left.

7:42Yeah, I remember. Like I didn't want to Yeah, I didn't want to confront him. Um which he then like flew off the handle about. Um but I just knew and this is the Tony Robbins quote, but it's just the when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change. And I think that I think pain moves people far far more effectively than pleasure does. Like the easy thing to way to prove it is like point a gun at someone's head and you have absolute compliance and they will do what they need to do, right?

8:10Automatically, just like that. Like death is the great motivator and the gun just reminds you. And so I think that if you can create the figurative gun to your head of the pain that you're experiencing and then I'm a I'm a big fan of future casting out negative scenarios. So people talk about like positive visualization. I prefer negative visualization, which is what if I keep doing what I'm currently doing for the next 10 years? What will my life look like then? That usually takes my current pain and then just magnifies it. And then that allows me to get my action threshold high enough that it goes over the edge so that I can take that first move. And so if you know what the inputs outputs are of what you need to do, the guy who has the little quote on his wall and you figure out whatever fuel you've got, not the one you wish you had, but the one you've got and you use that to do the first input you've crossed the line. You're in the game. Real quick, if you are a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So my team and I put together the 100 million dollar scaling roadmap, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so we broke it in these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources and finance. And so no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information. And if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help, and if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.